


In neon groves

by rosa_himmelblau



Series: The Roadhouse Blues [30]
Category: Wiseguy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:54:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26103781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: There are so many questions and Vinnie has so few answers.
Series: The Roadhouse Blues [30]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1069713





	In neon groves

Vinnie was annoyed that Joseph Cotten was asking all the wrong questions, but then, Joseph had the excuse that he didn't know that his friend was still alive, and Vinnie did. Vinnie knew because he'd seen half of this movie before, twice, once when he was in college and dating a film major and once a couple hours ago. And just like both of those times, the music was giving him a headache. It sounded like something that should be coming out of a loudspeaker at Coney Island, tinny and blaring and somehow not quite right. It sounded both light-hearted and evil.

Maybe not evil. Maybe it was just that annoying.

Trevor Howard was good, but Joseph Cotten, who was supposed to be the hero, just annoyed Vinnie. Between him and the music, Vinnie wanted to hit something.

Orson Welles wasn't there yet.

"He's not really dead, you moron," Vinnie said to the screen, but not very loud, and it didn't matter anyway because he was alone in the theatre. Of course he was. Who wanted to see _The Third Man_ at nine-forty-five on a Tuesday evening? Except for him, and he didn't even know why he'd come, except that he'd wanted to get out of the apartment. And he sort of did want to see the movie, sort of; it was more like, he wanted to be the guy who saw the movie the first time he saw it. So far, it wasn't working; he still felt like the guy who hadn’t said where he was going, and slammed the door for no reason when walked out of the apartment.

And he'd known that even if he’d asked, Sonny wouldn't want to come with him. Not because of the movie, but because Sonny didn't want to be with him any more than he wanted to be with Sonny right at that moment. If Sonny **had** come with him, Vinnie would probably have gone to the men's room and tried to find something to kill himself with. Was their relationship two steps forward, one step back, or one step forward, two steps back? Or maybe he was zigging, Sonny was zagging, and the only surprising thing was that they ever moved together at all.

The cat was sitting on Harry Lime's shoes and that proved he wasn't dead because the cat didn't like anybody but Harry, so even though you hadn't seen his face yet, it had to be Orson Welles. And then the light came on on his face and he was smiling at Joseph Cotten . . . what was his name, anyway? Holly. Joseph Cotten's name in this was Holly. And Harry was smiling at Holly like they were both in on this great joke, the greatest joke ever, and wasn't it wonderful? Vinnie knew that smile, all right. Boy, did he ever.

This was the point where, about two hours ago, Vinnie had gotten up and practically run out of the theatre.

Once he was outside, he’d lit a cigarette, and when he felt calmer, Vinnie started walking home, thinking about the funeral he almost hadn’t gone to.

He and Frank had nearly come to blows over Sonny’s funeral, with Frank practically hysterical about Vince not going, and Vince just as irrationally determined that he **was** going. Frank should have won—he had all the power, and he’d told Vinnie he’d shoot him if he tried to leave, and Vinnie hadn’t been a hundred percent sure he wouldn’t, though he was sure that if Frank did shoot him, it would only be in the foot or something. He wouldn’t have killed him to keep him from going to Sonny’s funeral.

And besides Frank, there was security at Quantico. They weren’t just there to keep people out.

Technically, Frank **did** win, because he was the one who decided to let Vince go. He never said why, but Vince knew it wasn’t because Frank had been swayed by his remarkable debating skills. When he asked—much later, when there was a chance Frank might have told him, all Frank had done was look at him like he was an idiot. That was all the answer he ever got.

He didn’t know why he was going home, when he’d gone to the movie specifically to keep from being at home, and when he got there, what would happen? He and Sonny wouldn’t talk to each other, and if he asked Sonny about the funeral, Sonny would look at him like he was an idiot and not answer him. Vinnie was beginning to discern a pattern.

Half his pack of cigarettes later, Vinnie was in the apartment lobby, wondering what the hell he should do. He didn’t want to go home, he didn’t want to see Sonny, he didn’t want—

That was the problem: he didn’t want anything except not to feel the way he felt, which wasn’t a starting point or an ending point or a point of any kind. It was a kind of emotional limbo. “God, it’s like _The Man in the Iron Mask_ —I broke out of purgatory and into limbo. Is limbo better or worse than purgatory?” Vinnie asked himself, and thought about asking Sonny’s opinion, and the explosion of irritation that would follow. That could be funny, anyway, but not right now.

There had to be someplace to go. He wasn’t hungry, but food was always—eating was something he could pretty much always do, just like sleeping was something he could always do, only at least when he was eating, Sonny wasn’t complaining about him doing too much of it. Which was kind of funny, really, since it wasn’t the sleeping that was making him fat. But feeding Vinnie was something Sonny enjoyed doing, so he wasn’t in a position to complain about Vinnie’s eating. It was a cultural thing.

Vinnie started walking because walking was better than standing still. He walked around the block and thought about going somewhere for a drink, only he’d discerned a pattern there, too, and the pattern was that when he had a drink, he ended up having more than one drink, several more than one, until he was slurry and stumbly and feeling mean, and why he’d want to feel like that, Vinnie didn’t know. That was something, anyway, that he recognized this as a bad thing and that he wasn’t going to do it.

When he saw the coffee shop, Vinnie went inside. Coffee wasn’t eating or drinking, coffee was just caffeine and a bunch of sugar, coffee was a time-killer. So Vinnie ordered a cup.

When it came, he started opening sugar packets and dumping them in. Frank had called what he drank junkie’s coffee. _“Nobody else puts eight packs of sugar in a cup of coffee, just you and the junkies.”_ And Vinnie hadn’t corrected him, hadn’t said he only used three—or maybe four, if the coffee was especially bitter, because Frank knew that perfectly well. When Frank brought him coffee, it was always sweetened, but not too sweet.

But it wasn’t a good idea to think about Frank, it made him— It wasn’t a good idea. It was better to think about that funeral, which there hadn’t been anything hinky about, unless you counted the closed coffin, which wasn’t—was it that unusual? Vinnie didn’t remember ever going to another funeral where there was a closed coffin, but what did that mean?

Anyway, he hadn’t been in any position to ask questions, even if it had occurred to him—and why the hell would it have? And who would he have asked? “Hey, Theresa, is the reason the coffin’s closed because Sonny’s not really in there? He’s not really dead, right?” Yeah, right. Vinnie couldn’t decide which would have turned out worse for him, if Theresa had known, or if she hadn’t.

Theresa hadn’t cried, and she hadn’t hugged him. She’d told him, very calmly, that Sonny had loved him like a brother, and she’d squeezed his hand, and she’d pretended not to notice how drunk he was. Vinnie had wanted to cry or something. He said he was sorry, but everybody said that, so it didn’t sound like an apology, or like he thought he was responsible.

Who **had** handled the funeral arrangements? Tracy? Had she known that far back that Sonny wasn’t dead? Sonny had said that until he’d contacted Tracy, only he and the bent Jersey cop had known he was alive. Had the cop handled the whole thing, and if so, how had he managed it?

“More coffee?” the waitress asked, and Vinnie nodded, watched the cup as it filled. She seemed annoyed with him, probably because he was hogging a booth where two people could be sitting, ordering more than a bottomless cup of coffee, and because he didn’t look like a big tipper. Or maybe she wasn’t annoyed with him and he was just being projecting, since he was annoyed with himself.

When he and Sonny sat for hours in in a restaurant, the waitresses never seemed annoyed, but then Sonny smelled like money, and he never slept in his clothes.

Vinnie started opening packs of sugar and dumping them in. He’d been drinking it like this, black and sweet, for as long as he’d been drinking coffee, which was a lot of years now. He’d been thirteen when his father started sneaking him cups, and sixteen when his mother stopped pretending not to notice.

Sonny drank his coffee black—

“Who cares?” Vinnie whispered to himself. “Who cares what Sonny does? **Who cares**?”

But it wasn’t about caring, it was about Sonny being his only point of reference, which explained a lot. It explained why he felt so trapped, it explained why he was so sensitive to Sonny’s behavior, it explained—

Vinnie wrenched his mind away from this line of thought. Sonny had said that until he’d contacted Tracy, only he and that Jersey cop knew he was alive.

Had Sonny lied to him? Would Sonny lie to him?

Of course he would, and for at least two reasons Vinnie could think of: because maybe he couldn’t trust Vinnie, and because it was none of Vinnie’s business. And knowing Sonny, there could be other reasons that didn’t even make sense.

The waitress came back, and Vinnie did the first smart thing he’d done all night: he switched to decaf. He didn’t need to get the jitters and be up all night. It wasn’t his imagination that she was impatient with him; he didn’t look or smell like he had all the money in the world. Vinnie looked at his watch. Well, no wonder she was annoyed, he’d been sitting there for nearly an hour. _Where did the time go? Time flies when you’re having coffee._

Vinnie drained his cup, and when the waitress came back over, he got up and handed her five tens, just to see the look on her face. He might not smell like money, but he could throw the stuff around like a pro. He’d learned from the best, after all.

There was no place else to go, so Vinnie walked back to the movie theatre and bought another ticket. This was the third time he’d paid to see this movie, and by God this time he was going to see it all the way through to the end. At least that way he’d feel he’d accomplished something, even if it was a useless something.

So now he was back, and the cat was sitting on Harry Lime’s shoes, and Harry was smiling that smile, and Vinnie wasn’t going anywhere. He wasn’t going anywhere at all.

Holly chased Harry, lost him, and nobody believed him that Harry was alive. And then they did because— Vinnie wasn't sure, he'd gone out for some stale popcorn, had come back when they were digging up the grave that—surprise!—Harry Lime wasn't in.

Trevor Howard said they should have buried him deeper, as if it made any difference how deep you buried a coffin with the wrong body in it. "You're getting on my nerves too, Trevor. The first thing you gotta do is bury the right guy. After that you can worry how deep. Some cop you are." Vinnie kept thinking his name was Caraway, which didn't make any sense since Joseph Cotten kept calling him Callahan. It was Calloway. A caraway was a seed.

Why had the OCB not followed up properly? Vince wondered if it had something to do with him, that maybe Frank had dropped the ball because he’d been too busy making sure Vince didn’t fall off into the deep end. He’d admitted that he’d done just that where Aldo was concerned, that he’d called off the roadblocks and the bloodhounds too soon, which had maybe indirectly resulted in Vinnie getting shot.

Not that Vince had ever blamed Frank. It was Frank who blamed Frank, because that’s who Frank was. Vince just found it unsettling. It wasn’t that he didn’t think Frank could make mistakes, it just wasn’t something he liked to think about.

Someone should have followed up, and in Frank’s world **someone** meant **Frank**. Good thing Frank would never know anything about it.

Vinnie thought that the first time he saw this movie, he must have left before the scene on the Ferris Wheel, because he was pretty sure he'd have remembered that, he'd have wondered if Harry was going to shoot Holly, or try to push him off the Ferris Wheel, or what. Now he knew Harry wouldn't, and not because it was Joseph Cotten, and Harry was the bad guy, and Holly was the good guy, the clueless moron of a good guy who loved his friend even when he knew he was a monster. Harry Lime sold penicillin that might as well have been Kool-Aid, killed soldiers and pregnant women and children; Harry Lime killed some guy who worked with him so there would be a body to put in his grave; Harry Lime had the woman who loved him sent back to Russia, just to distract Holly from looking for him; Harry Lime had garroted a man—

No, he hadn’t. But Harry Lime **was** a monster. And he was Holly's friend, and he loved Holly. He wasn't going to push him off a Ferris Wheel.

"Stop thinking so much," Vinnie told himself. "For God’s sake, stop thinking so much. Just shut up; sit there, and eat your popcorn, and watch the movie."

But he couldn't stop thinking, and he held his breath while they chased Harry Lime through the sewers, wanting him to get away. They were after him with torches, and with dogs, and even his friend Holly was chasing him, especially his friend was chasing him, and they were going to catch him, they were going to kill him. They had to, he was the bad guy, and the bad guy died in the end of the story, right?

Trevor Howard shot him, right after Harry shot the nice cop who'd read the lousy books Holly had written. But Harry kept going, climbing up the spiral staircase—who puts a spiral staircase in a sewer?—until he was stopped by the grate at the top, until he couldn't go up any more. And then he died.

Vinnie got up. The movie was still playing, but he didn't care what happened to the Russian girlfriend, or Holly, or Caraway, he didn't care if this time they buried him deep enough or didn't bury him at all, just left his body in the sewer. He threw his half-full—or maybe half-empty—popcorn box in the trash, and wondered if Harry Lime really was dead this time.


End file.
